Give life the flowers I never got to give to you
by ffanon
Summary: Clara's actions have consequences, a character study of sorts.
1. Chapter 1

It works both ways.

Sometimes she'll roll over, and he'll be there - curled in on himself or against her. Other times, he'll be oceans and oceans and oceans away. It's on those nights she's left to make the decision of turing back to shore or starting to swim.

Sometimes he'll roll over, and she'll be there - on her side, or back or stomach - floating freely; drifting towards him and away. Other nights he'll wake to the sound of feet shuffling against floor and as soon as he opens his eyes, he can see the shadows dancing; making way for the silhouette as it tumbles back and forth. That becomes a familiarity. The real surprise is in who he gets to meet when he rises from the bed. A mother or a father; daughter or son. Lover or a mistress - warrior or priest. It's endless, the amount of people she became.

When he starts keeping journals - filling them with information generated in early morning screaming matches; names and places and ages and history - he tells himself that its for both their sakes.

She tried reading them at first. But only after a few pages the sound of paper turning would be replaced by wails. It'd come to the point where he had hidden them - for both their sakes - because when she got deep enough, she refused to let them go; ended up screaming and shoving, throwing punches.

He does everything in his power to make sure she doesn't hurt herself.

But he doesn't have the same claim to do that for himself. After all, he did this.

She tells him he didn't.

But he knows if he asks softly enough and late enough - with the two of them wrapped in comforter upon comforter, their breaths pooling togther between them - she'll hesitate before answering, _"No. No I don't regret it." _

But she still hesitates. He thinks she doesn't realize. She thinks that he doesn't notice.

After all, the time spent within her own mind is an unknown pocket; with her hand inside it, digging for something that may or may not be there.

Her form begins to crack; weeks peel by and her skin starts to split. More and more often he wakes to the sound of muffled howls.

More and more often, he can't do anything.

He stops writing the journals when he stops being able to get words out of her. Months begin to tick by, sliding past them lathered and agony and stretched out silences, falling far beneath their feet.

One morning he wakes to empty, heavy sheets pooling around his ankles. He can see her - just barely - on the shoreline. The lines between consciousness and its opposite blurring between his eyes. He's floating in the water - it's pulling at his calves, hugging his waist, pinching his shoulders.

He can hear the sound of boxes being packed - clothes being shoved togther, objects and memories being tossed down upon that - can hear the waves as they collapse against the shore. His chest aches; the water pulls him under, beats his lungs, trying to prod the air outside.

He resurfaces.

She's gone.

The waves have washed away the remaining foot prints on the shore.

He drags himself from the bed, limbs disconnected and frayed, fists are born on the top of his thighs. He falls back, the sheets are damp, the ceiling above him hums. It's far too warm for winter. His face feels taunt - flushed a deep cherry red, translucent seeds slip from the edges of his eyes, fading into the sheets.

"Do you regret it?" He asks.

Her hesitation stretches on.


	2. Chapter 2

She spends the first two months in solitude.

Rents a small, two room apartment north of town. Goes to the nearest Target after and buys twenty, thick, crow black journals along with a pack of pens. Spends two hours every morning - after waking up, or after eating - combing through the ones already filled, searching for connections, searching for memories and faces - and something.

Searching for something she knows she won't find in now-foreign hand writing. Traces. Objects. Proof that they were real; more proof than the recollection of a mind on fire, and the scrawled notes of a man trying to dodge sparks.

She spends most days in bed; starts writing letters two weeks after she moves in.

She doesn't make a home. She makes a 'nook - a hole in an iron structure lined with grays and blacks and ugly, imprinted things. Her neck begins to ache; a deep, spiraling heat just right to the base of her skull, a few sunday mornings in a row she wakes up wondering if she's finally going mad.

It wouldn't be a surprise.

She drags a fresh new journal from the floor and scribbles down thoughts in it; long, dragging words, or jutted lines that she can't recognize - like the static on a life monitor.

A month and three weeks in, she realizes she shouldn't have bought so many journals - she doesn't know to write down her thoughts when she wakes up as a stranger; she doesn't have anyone to speak too, most memories are burned out by the time she slinks back into her own skin. Lives begin to chalk up, go unnoticed. She spends the next three days in bed, crying, wailing into a pillow.

This wasn't what she wanted.

She ends up falling from the bed, resolves in crawling to the bathroom to go about everything, and back to bed. She leans against the mattress and bites the fabric of a dusty blanket and screams and screams and screams. Because she's stuck, hasn't talked to anyone in months - and is surely loosing her mind.

She can't tell if she doesn't regret it.

She ends up dry heaving into the sink after she asks the question allowed - a echo of a voice that once sounded so desperate, floating against the edge of a fabric cocoon - and can't bring herself to answer.

Because she doesn't know.

2 months.

3 months.

4 months.

Nobody comes - which is only a surprise in the barest way, she hadn't expected the Maitland's nor her father; the Doctor had been an exception, with the TARDIS and all - but he doesn't show.

She doesn't know how she feels about that.

Relief pools just beneath her skin, tinged with misery and simmering in anger - stitched togther with guilt. A trashcan gains a permanent residence beside her bed.

5 months.

When she wakes up in pages of foreign text, ripped and crumbled sheets of paper pooling around her ankles and strewn across her lap; knees chafed and polished from the cheap carpeting - a scream dying in the back of her throat, she writes a letter, two hours later she puts it in the mail; a phone number printed at the very bottom of the page.

She gets a call three days later.

"Honey?" Her father's voice shakes on the other end. The room is hot. Blistering around the seams - it's far too hot for winter - but it's not winter anymore, its summer now. She can't speak; swallows and quakes on the edge of her bed, she bites her tongue hard enough for blood to spill into her mouth. "Clara?" He prompts.

She forces her jaw to unhinge, and then slowly she whispers, "I'm here." Another pause. "I'm here." Car's pass on the street below; a mixture of engines lifts and fails in a dying chorus, people blare their horns, birds are screeching, but nothing drowns out the sound her father makes on the other end. A mixture between a sob, and a whoop of laughter, and for a moment an image smears its way into her minds eye; a younger man lifting his daughter into the air, laughing and laughing and laughing, spinning her around, both grinning wildly while a wife and mother watches from the door way.

She swallows, her face feels hot - taunt, pulled in all directions, her hands shake. "I'm here, daddy." She whispers again.

"Where -" He stutters, voice unhinged; burning from the inside out. "Where - where are you? Where have you been? Are you okay? Clara it's been _months - _I - I didn't know what happened to you. I didn't know if you were _alive_! The Maitland's have been worried sick, I've been worried sick! Your friend, the Doctor, stopped by a few months ago and all he said was 'I'm sorry.' I couldn't get anything out of him - honey, honey what did he mean?"

Her hands just continue shaking, the edges of her eyes begin to burn. She can't breathe - she can't do anything, she can't she can't she can't. "I," She whispers, the words floating on the surface of her tongue. "I can't -"

"I can't fix it."

She hangs up. Too many images. Too many hands. Too many things, pressing in - crowding. Too many things fucking living in this apartment; spilling out from their own homes within the bindings of books uninvited. The phone rings two more times, she slips from the edge of the bed - landing on the floor, collapsing onto her side. She lays there, on the too hot floor, the edges of carpet scraping her skin like sand at the beach. One hand lifts, reaching behind her and grabbing the edge of a duvet from where it hangs, that same hand tugs and drags; pulling the blanket to her, draping it over her because no one else is left to do it. Not a mother, nor a father or a lover; not a daughter or son. Nobody. They're all gone.

She sinks her teeth into the corner.

The phone rings again.

"I can't fix it."

The fabric doesn't do enough to muffle her screams; just like how the roaring of a plane as it passes over the sea doesn't drown out the waves as they collapse on the shore, over and over again.

"I can't fix it -" Oh, what a strange thing agony breeds. "I can't fix -" Her hands shake; her shoulders split, flame spills out from the bottom of her skull, pours over her back and scorns her skin. She sobs and screams against the pain, there's a pounding on the door. "I can't -"

The pounding's louder - it needs to stop.

This all needs to stop.

It's just too fast; she can't spin this fast, can't keep up - she doesn't want to drown.

"I -"

The pounding bleeds into her skin, people are shouting - screaming, voices splintering and clawing their way through the wood and into her room. A man shouts.

Do you? A voice whispers, falling atop the blanket; straddling her hips, grinding its chest against her back. It leans in close, lips curling in the space around her ear. Do you? It asks,

Do you regret it?

The blanket blocks out the whimpers, and slowly, the pounding stops.

But the voice behind her ear doesn't.

**AN'S: Reviews and constructive criticism are always appreciated. **


	3. Andromeda

He begins to find her lives.

He finds one with light melted into her skin. Standing on a shoreline - on the very edge of a massacre. The bodies of children lie at her feet; one hand twists the wedding ring on the other.

"He was so young," She whispers when he gets close enough to hear. Her voice is a mutilated and foreign noise, bouncing around like shrapnel in the flesh of her throat. "So young." She continues. Her skin is taunt and tan - a shade spiraled up from after decades of working in the sun - littered with scars.

He wants to ask what happened.

He steps on something, something cracks, and she turns around. Fingers still rubbing against the wedding ring; a band of intricate fabric wound around her wrist, neon blues and greens, weaved with purple atop a deep earth red and brown, littered with flecks of faint yellow, almost white. Different world, different customs, different culture. The skin of her fingers is sliced open, the peaks of her knuckles stained with blood - or dirt, if he lets his mind wander far enough to convince himself of the latter.

He goes to ask, she goes to speak; mouth unhinging with a winding crack, flesh and bone splintering open after time had shoved it shut.

A shot fires, and before she can even blink again, her body hits the sand. Blood swells from the injury; rushes toward the sea. He's left standing there, staring down at the body, at the bodies around her. Left wondering if one of them, or more of them, are her children - if the man she was looking for was her husband or son, or maybe just a friend or neighbor - and the wedding band was for someone else.

He stands there long enough that he begins to wonder why he hasn't been shot yet.

And continues to stand until he wonders, maybe if he stays long enough, he'll be shot too.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

He comes across a teacher who can't speak.

This time around, her hair is blond, her eyes a hazel-green rather than the earth brown he knew it to be. She's living out her life on a planet that has been engulfed in peace for the past fifty thousand years. She tells him she's happy, tells him how she lost her voice - a normal flue gone ramped during her childhood - tells him how she makes her living instructing a paint class down the street.

The grass is blue there; the sky a light shade of violet, flecked with yellow clouds. She smiles at him over a cup of almost-coffee and asks him if he'd like a lesson, maybe in watercolors, she says it with a lingering smile, eyes alight with mischief. Her brand of sign language is unique - a flutter of movement, smooth enough that for a second he forgets she isn't speaking - it's beautiful, and all he can do is smile at her and nod along.

He spends a few weeks there; learns the streets, strolls them with her in the early morning and late at night. It's peaceful. They go out for dinner a few times in pristine restraints, where the waiters have blue skin and black freckles and three eyes.

He walks her back afterwards one night, the indigo grass turned midnight blue. It reminds him of the crest of the ocean, but he doesn't say so. Instead, he walks her to the door, waits beside her as she opens it.

She kisses him afterwards; he keeps his eyes open, focusing on the barest flecks of green - dried mist from paint - just below her right eye, hovering on the edge of a loose constellation of freckles. He tries not to focus on the way her hands curl around his biceps, digging into the muscles - now more defined than when a mirrored pair of hands touched them last - and the memories that arise with it. When she opens her eyes, he mimics the movement, when she smiles at him, he does the same all over again.

The grass sways beneath their feet, she bids him goodnight, another peck on the cheek. Grinning, she signs, 'For good luck'. As she tucks herself into the doorway, she turns back, signing, 'Come back for your art lesson tomorrow, I just got some charcoal and could use a model.' Before he can answer, she shuts the door.

He's left standing there with the ocean swaying around his feet.

Her house burns down the next day.

"Well, at least now she'll have enough charcoal." Says one of her neighbors - a far too tall man with a potbelly gut, his skin a diluted - disgusting - shade of lime green. "She was always complaining about the prices, yeah, I know she can't speak, Jess, but you could see it in her face." He's left watching as the strangers face contorts with disgust, "People like that gotta learn to keep it to themselves."

For the first time in over fifty thousand years, a punch is thrown. A jaw splits under a pair of knuckles; blood streaks across the pavement, and the Doctor's left sauntering away. No one follows. They can see the storm building in the horizon of his shoulders; flicking and simmering underneath his skin, desperate to break the surface again.

He fills three journals writing about her, two weeks later, he fills fifteen more, because he remembered some things he forgot the first time.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

He finds a little girl with crimson hair and deep brown skin, cradling the hand of a smaller boy. A boy with light brown hair, light green eyes to match his sisters, only hers are tinted gray. Like the sky above the sea.

She stares up at him, an edge in her features - something that shouldn't belong, doesn't have a right to be there at her age. She swallows and the skin across her lips cracks; blood wells up, her tongue flicks out and swipes across it, only making the mess worse. It almost brings him to his knees.

"Can I help you?" She snaps; voice born in foreign flames, a tone born from fleeing bullets. He just continues staring; trying to get the words to formulate and rise up from the back of his throat.

"Can I help you?" She repeats a few seconds later, pulling the younger boy behind her back. He swallows, the edges of his skin beginning to prickle, fumbling, he tears back the lap of his coat and shoves his hand into the pocket, pulls out several coins. They shimmer against the light. He extends his hand, she stares his palm, and then up at him again.

"I don't want those."

"Take it." He snaps, meeting the edge in her tone step for step.

She blinks, narrowing her gaze, and without removing his eyes from hers she lifts a hand and swipes the coins from his palms. "Now 'get." She spits after, glaring at him - fire crackling beneath her skin, burning the edges of her veins, sweeping inwards. Any life that remained is charred by now.

And he does, because he doesn't have a choice.

The sound of tiny feet fleeing, shuffling in the sand and pattering away is pressed into his mind for days to follow. He fills scraps of papers with them; they end up lying around the TARDIS, taking refuge wherever they please. He doesn't argue, doesn't say a word.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

He meets a little boy in the crust of spring.

He's running in a field, from one neighboring forest to its cousin and back again. He's got a mop of deep brown hair, and blue-brown eyes. He imagines he could spend years staring at them, if only trying to come up with a name to articulate the whole range of that color - perhaps he could go somewhere by starting with the definition; the particular shade of blue that arises in a distant mist on a foggy afternoon, the shade that hovers right above the steam soaked road. The Doctor stands at the edge of the forest, the air kissing at his cheeks.

The child shrieks, laughing and howling with delight. He pulls wild flowers from the earth and throws them. Dogs bark in the distant, people yell. He doesn't seem to mind.

The Doctor blinks, the boy weaves through the grass, pulling white flower after white flower, each unique petal heaving and flopping in the air after its uproot.

He fills five journals with the image - a unique little boy ripping up white flowers - fills two more with the description of his eyes.

Fills three more pondering about where he could have come from. Maybe in a different time. He fills one with only a question, asks Clara is she ever wanted children. Then proceeds to burn it because he's always been a selfish man - only asking questions that pertain to him, and swallowing down the answers that pertained to others. He burns the other three shortly after and spends the next three weeks awake, wondering what the hell could have caused such an ugly form to fleet across his mind, and root itself in - in a time like this. He comes to the conclusion that he never needed much prompting for such an act to formulate itself. After all, look what he kept from the woman herself for such a long time.

A selfish, selfish man indeed.

He wouldn't blame her if she does indeed regret it - probably agree with her. Feelings like those would be well deserved.


	4. Atrophy

"I.. I sometimes feel like I'm loosing my mind."She shifts atop the bed, squirming on the fabric, hands fluttering in her lap. "I'm -" Her tongue flicks out and drags across her lips. "I'm just, I feel like I'm going crazy."

Her eyelids flutter; snapshots of images. She squeezes them shut but they peel back, little half-moons peeping into the room. The edges of her vision cracks, the colors bleeding togther, sparking static across her line of sight. She swallows, her fingers run across each other. "I - I sometimes feel, like I can't tell whats real and what isn't."

"It's like my mind keeps trying to tell me how easy it would be for this all to be a dream."

"Each time I go to sleep, I'm waking up and each time I'm waking up I'm going to sleep."

"It's scary."

"..I don't even know if this is real. I mean - it is. But, I have doubts."

She squirms again, sliding a little to the left, the sheets tug underneath her; her hands uncurl and curl again, fluttering, gasping. Her eyelids flick, snap open as her jaw tugs itself apart. She pulls in a breathe, lets it out.

The empty apartment echoes her movement. In. Out.

In. Out.

Because this has to be real - she digs her nails into her palm; pain, bright red, tinged purple crescent moons on yellowing skin. Pain. Blood. This has to be real, because what else can there be? This can't be some elaborate, vibrant, dream?

Right?

Lie.

She sinks her teeth into her lip, digs her nails into her palm. Reaches for the phone, the number that flees her fingers is automatic, squeezes her eyes shut - ignores the images that burn into existence, ignores the pounding in her ears that this could be fake.

The phone rings.

Once.

Twice.

Fake.

A third time, broken by a snap as it's yanked from its cradle and pressed against flesh. She sits for a moment, in the graying apartment, gently lulling breathes in and out, listening to the pants as they begin to bleed into existence on the other end. Her free hand twitches, fingers dragging along the inside of her thigh.

She got dressed today.

Doesn't really know why - doesn't really see a point; is this real?

"Hello?"It's been almost a year since she heard that voice. He sounds different.

"Clara?"She wonders if she should savor it - savor his voice over the gap of time it takes for her to recognize her own name.

"You need to stop."The words scrape against the bottom of her lip; flesh against gravel, they tumble and spill scarred into the air. Bleeding all over the place - something hot trickles across the valley of her palm. She's gone too deep - she swallows and tries to rang them in. "You -"She shakes, her frame jerking in a violent spasm, starting at the neck and shooting down the shoulders, spilling into her lower half. "You have to stop this."

If she nearly screams the last line, well, what else is there to do?

"Clara - what, what is it? What's wrong?" You. You. You. Ignoring the problem again. I told you to stop - that is causing the problem; you are causing the problem and you're ignoring it again and just stop stop stop stop ignoring the problem.

"You need to stop." She tells him again, the words rolling from her mouth. This time, lathered in something she can't quite name - that stuff that pours from somewhere when you speak to a child who can't seem to comprehend what's going on, what you are trying to tell him.

She talked to him like that a lot. Whoops. Bad thing or good thing?

"What - what do I need to stop?" Idiot. Clever boy -

clever boy wa s a lie -

"Stop -" Her voice jerks too now; riding out the shock that her body demanded to generate and feel. "Stop looking for me." Her tone splinters, bleeding into a shriek and muffling, tumbling curling in on itself on the way out. "Stop looking for me! Stop looking for my past lives!"

She falls. Her knees collapse, a little to the right, followed by her elbow and then her side and eventually her head. All cushioned by the carpet - a dull tan - she curls on on herself; presses her elbow into her stomach, ignores the way her forearm brushes against her ribs, tightens her hold on the phone. "You need to stop looking for me," She growls into the receiver.

"It isn't fair."

He's panting again, broken little gasps lined with words but nothing solid enough to ever really form, falling apart on the edge of the air.

"I'm sorry." He spits out eventually, she feels it smack against her cheek, slide down, uselessly. She tilts her head back; hair dragging against the carpet - or at least what's left of it, she took a pair of scissors to it past week - sparks crack against her cheek. She stairs at the wall. In. Out.

She swallows, "Sorry doesn't fix anything."

Another pause, more breathing.

How easy is it for him to breathe?

"What -" He begins to ask - what can I do to help? Always offering; never following through. Broken promises, lies curved in the flesh of knives; pressed against backs.

She inhales, exhales, lets her thoughts pour and sink into the carpet. "Stop." She whispers at some point. "Stop looking for me."

"I don't want you."


End file.
